When backing up and restoring directory limits in an operating system, add, set and get routines work only on a single directory path. Since the operation on a single path may require multiple Add, Set or Get Application Program Interface (API) calls, restoration of a large amount of directory paths can generate a large amount of network traffic. Moreover, restoration of a large amount of directory paths can require sending and receiving the API and the data for each operation across the network. For example, in a network of computers, a first computer in the network may have a failed hard drive and a second computer may contain backup data for the first computer. An administrator may want to invoke a backup and restore routine. If there happened to be 64,000 target directories and all 64,000 directories had to be updated, there would be 128,000 round trip operations across the network. In some cases the backup and restore operations could take several days. What is needed is a way to reduce the time required to complete the backup and restore operations. In order to reduce the traffic, one way would be to batch all of the operations at one computer and send the batch to the second computer.
Batch processing has been used to increase the efficiency of data handling. U.S. Pat. No. 5,889,896 discloses batch processing of raw image data which has been scanned into the memory of a processing system. System throughput is enhanced by permitting a workstation to execute a task on a batch of node index file records and to return the modified index file records to the stage of a work queue. However, the prior art does not address the problem of applying batch submission to reduce network traffic when backing up and restoring directory limits in an operating system.